This is an unofficial draft call for participation to an unconfirmed W3C Workshop on Interactive Media Content on the Web.

What is the purpose of this workshop?

The primary goal of the workshop is to bring together browser vendors, content owners, encoding and authoring tool makers, distributors and distribution enablers, experts in media standards and other relevant areas (e.g. accessibility, scripting, security, web) to converge on technologies for bundling and playback of rich media experiences on the Open Web Platform for offline distribution and streaming scenarios, and extend the platform with additional technologies when needed.

The secondary goals of the workshop are as follows:

  • Explore interoperation needs to guarantee smooth and consistent playback of experiences that mix media and non-media content across devices.
  • Understand how on-the-fly customization of media experiences and need to adapt to the streaming context in real time affect technical standards used to create and bundle these experiences.
  • Evaluate the opportunities for aligning technical standards used to create interactive media experiences across distribution channels (live streaming, video-on-demand streaming, broadcast, offline)

In this document, the term rich media experience refers to a playback experience with an internal timeline composed of a mix of media content (audio, video), non-media content (captions, images, overlays), content personalized on the fly, and/or interactive content.

Which topics will be covered?

The following topics have been proposed, along with references to relevant specifications and documents. Please submit a pull request or raise an issue on GitHub to provide feedback and suggest further workshop topics. You may also email François Daoust <fd@w3.org>.

Packaging and distribution

  • How to bundle audio/video content with non-media content and user interactions for streaming use cases? For instance, how to bundle a live stream for a sports event with non-media content such as players' statistics in real-time?
  • How to bundle audio/video content with non-media content and user interactions for offline distribution across devices and runtimes? For instance, how to make a classic DVD-like experience, with navigation, ancillary content, encapsulating and aiding presentation and navigation of a movie?
  • Can a single solution be used to bundle rich media experiences for live, catch-up, video-on-demand (VOD), and offline distribution mechanisms?
  • How does the need to maintain variants of rich media experiences (e.g. for different languages, resolutions or color spaces) affect packaging strategies?
  • Do possible bundling solutions play nicely with edge cache servers? For instance, do they allow to distribute content from edge cache servers in a way that preserves Web security guarantees (based on the notion of origin), and avoids duplication of content?
  • What synergies exist between bundling of rich media content and bundling of other types of content?
  • What mechanisms may allow the integration of monetization schemes in a bundled experience?

Some relevant documents

Orchestration of rich media experiences

  • How to orchestrate synchronized playback of media and non-media content? For example, how to make a tutorial-like experience, where a lecture is presented, in context, in a web experience, with slides and diagrams delivered using web technologies but synchronized to the video?
  • What in-band and out-of-band approaches may be used to expose media timed events? How do these approaches fit in media production pipelines?
  • What common formats may be used to describe non-media content attached to the media timeline?
  • How does the need to fetch external resources (such as images, scripts or side media) for rendering at specific points of the media timeline affect the modeling of these resources in a rich media experience? In streaming use cases, what mechanisms can be used to allow playback to start from an arbitrary position in its media timeline, fetching only the resources that are useful to create the media experience at that position?
  • How to manage content overlays, e.g. to track players in live sport events? How to guarantee frame-accuracy rendering when needed?
  • How to manage the insertion of interstitial content (pre-roll, mid-roll, post-roll) with varying lengths? How does insertion affect the timeline and ability to seek into a media stream?
  • How to guarantee smooth playback transitions between a main media stream and interstitial content, especially when media parameters (e.g. codec, resolution, tracks) differ?
  • What capabilities —APIs, semantics, techniques for rendering, processing, personalization, customization, interoperability, etc.— can developers leverage to ensure accessibility of rich media experiences? Are there internationalization considerations?

Some relevant documents

Consistent User Experience (UX) across devices

  • What capabilities do applications need to detect a priori to assess whether playback of a rich media experience will be smooth?
  • What performance measurements can applications track to measure the user perceived playback quality in real-time? What additional performance measurements may need to be exposed?
  • How can rich media experiences adapt their needs for performance in real time?
  • What common baseline of technologies may be used across media devices?

Some relevant documents

Media Standardization Landscape

Building on the previous topics, goal is to hold a plenary discussion on media standards on the Web:

  • Who is doing what: ongoing work across standardization organisations (SDO)
  • Standardization priorities and roadmap

Some relevant documents

How can I attend?

Attendance is free for all invited participants and is open to the public, whether or not W3C members.

Please register for the event before @@@ to be notified of the videos availability, of the forum set up to facilitate discussion among registered participants, and of the logistics for the interactive sessions. The Program Committee will only accept participants whose registration data shows relevance to the topic of the workshop.

Our aim is to get a diversity of attendees from a variety of industries and communities, including:

  • Technology groups
  • Experts in verticals and delivery
  • Content owners and enabling technology providers (encoding and authoring tool makers)
  • Distributors and distribution enablers (e.g. CDNs)
  • Media devices manufacturers (TV sets, VR/AR headsets)
  • Browser vendors
  • Experts in relevant technologies (accessibility, media, scripting, security, web)

This workshop, as other W3C meetings, operates under its Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct.

How can I suggest a presentation?

To submit a talk for the workshop, please refer to our information for speakers.

What is W3C?

W3C is a voluntary standards consortium that convenes companies and communities to help structure productive discussions around existing and emerging technologies, and offers a Royalty-Free patent framework for Web Recommendations. We focus primarily on client-side (browser) technologies, and also have a mature history of vocabulary (or “ontology”) development. W3C develops work based on the priorities of our members and our community.

Program

Program Committee

Chair

  • TBD

Committee

  • TBD

Sponsors

TBD